Tour de Rickshaw raises £4.5m for Children in Need

After six incredible years working with BBC Children in Need, we were both thrilled and humbled to be asked back to work on 2018’s Rickshaw Challenge, which sees six incredible young people and The One Show’s Matt Baker tackle an eight-day cycling challenge to raise vital money for BBC Children in Need.

Matt and the inspirational young riders, who have all been supported by Children in Need projects in the past, rode a staggering 423 miles, first crossing the English Channel to kick off the challenge in Calais, France. After an intense eight hours cycling the length of the Dover Straight via the Euro Tunnel Team Rickshaw cycled their way up country to the finish line in Salford, Manchester, over a period of eight days.

What’s more, this year the rickshaw received a makeover courtesy of McLaren – where a team of engineers at the McLaren Technology Centre created the next generation rickshaw from the ground up!

Acting as roaming regional press officers, our key role on the road (other than loudly cheering) was to not only engage local media and ensure they were covering the event in both the run-up to and during the challenge, but to also help raise awareness of the rickshaw’s route. Vital to the teams’ morale is seeing people out on the streets cheering them along, which not only raises spirits all round but encourages additional ‘on-street’ donations.

To ensure we were approaching the task at hand from a strategic point of view, not only did we ensure that all regional media were covering the challenge and publishing the route on their social channels, but we also spoke to over 90 city and parish councils, many a locally run Facebook group, and over 15 local Primary schools to get the message out there! This helped make for a record year in on-road donations!

After 423 miles cycled, we raised 4.5M for Children in need, a commendable amount of money that went towards the record-breaking £50M total that was announced on the official Children in Need appeal show on Friday 16th November.